NetImmerse - Evaluating User Experience in Immersive Network Exploration

The increasing amount of interconnected data has given rise to a need among researchers and practitioners to develop new approaches to visualizing network structures. The intricacy of such structures vastly exceeds the capacity of most conventional approaches to network visualization in terms of dimensional and resolution restrictions, as they are mostly presented as two-dimensional with on a limited size screen. An additional limitation of traditional network visualization tools from a human-computer interaction standpoint is the limited interaction itself where immersion and "deep-diving" into high-dimensional data is not possible. We built NetImmerse, an application to visualize network data in a virtual environment with the ability to overview, zoom, and request details on-demand. Within the virtual space, users can either walk around the 3D data representation or rotate and move the representation using the two controllers. We tested the application with users and simulated a representative use case. NetImmerse enabled the participants to gain accurate insights based on the defined task. Participants indicated a PU of 5.25 and a PEOU of 5.46. We believe that NetImmerse is an engaging platform for multi-dimensional data exploration and may result in better insights and enhanced network data exploration.